Medical School requires what?!?
A Personal Statement.
That's like "tell me about yourself" but worse! I don't know anything about myself if anyone asks me! I mean, sure, I know why I want to go to medical school. I know my own reasons for wanting to be a doctor. I'm just going to have one heck of a hard time writing it all down in one page.
Why did I want to be a doctor in the first place? What made me want to go into medicine?
Let me try to answer that question now.
Personal Statement. (at least a practice version)
I do alot of service activities for other people with my church. I have been doing these "service projects" since I was 12. Sometimes they would involve getting together toys and blankets and other miscellaneous presents for unfortunate people who would have no christmas otherwise. Sometimes, we would make baby blankets and toys for hospitals. My favorite ones were the ones where we actually got to go to people's homes and help them in a way that no one else could.
I remember one time specifically. I was 17, and I had gone to a conference with other youth in my church, and we were staying at Southern Wesleyan University's campus. We were using their dorms, their lecture halls and their library for miscellaneous classes and activities.
We left campus one time during our stay there. The reason we left was for a sort of scavenger hunt. We went to a neighborhood nearby, and split into teams. Each team had a grown up in it, and about 4-6 kids ranging in age from 12 to 18. I remember the objective of this game was to see which team could do the most chores in the set amount of time. It was a Service Scavenger Hunt, and we had five hours to convince as many people as possible that we were going to do their dishes, or take out their trash for free.
About the seventh or eighth house my group came to contained a widow who was around 94 years old. Her dished hadn't been done in days, and her trash can was overflowing. Her yard wasn't about to win any prizes either. There was an old clothes line that was made of an old telephone pole and a splintery old used-to-be 4x4, and there was a huge bush that had been strangled to death by large, thorny weeds. We told her that we'd do her dishes, and take out her trash for her. We kept on having to tell her that we didn't accept money. Everyone got started on something. Two girls in my group started doing dishes and working in the house, and my friend and I started working out in the yard. We tackled the pole, literally, and had to dig the clothesline out of the ground. We swept the roof, which was covered with pine needles and mold, and we cut down the monstrosity that was the bush. Other teams arrived and urged us to find a stopping point because the time was up. We got them to help as well. The old lady's daughter arrived, she was about 70 something, and was updated on what we were doing. There were about 45-50 teenagers raking the leaves, cleaning the house, and clearing her driveway. There were about three people on the roof sweeping at the same time. We had to go to the neighbor's house to borrow brooms, rakes, and shovels to work with.
By the time we were done, the old woman was crying with joy at the condition of her house, and my group and I were crying right along with her. We were so happy to see the joy that we brought to her and her daughter and we loved that old woman then. There wasn't a happier bunch of teenagers in the world at that moment. We had transformed her yard and house into a liveable, comfortable home. She kept thanking us and offering us money, but we insisted that we didn't need it. She settled for giving us each a hug. The other groups had gone to the cars once the work was done, and my group left after we had each embraced the old woman.
Thus was born my need to help people. I wished to be able to do that my whole life. I wanted to help people like that all the time. I considered several careers besides medicine. I had at that time already considered medicine and then abandoned it, because all of my desires were based on watching the show Diagnosis Murder when I was 13. It wasn't until later, during a week at a camp for girls where we learned (among other things) proper first aid, did I realize that I wanted to help people through medicine. Medicine, I realized, would give me the opportunity to help people in and out of the hospital. I would be able to aid a friend or family member when they needed it. I'd be able to help people with medicine. I have wanted to be a doctor since I was 13 and didn't realize it until I was 19. But now that I do, and now that I know, I'll do anything that it takes to be a doctor.
(this may require some editing for length)
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